I have seen sales pages advertising clothing and toys from Wal-Mart (a chain department store) using their own store employees and their young relatives. I thought this was a great idea because they were real people, with real faces and bodies, not idealized models’ faces and bodies. However, the pictures were NOT trying to be sexual at all.
If it’s underwear, I’d still have objections. I don’t think a Wal-Mart employee would be happy being asked to bring his wife along for an underwear session to show the customers it’s real people who wear it.
So I understand PART of what your advertisers are going for: real people use these products and services. But half-naked or all-naked? When it has nothing to do with the product or service, so it’s completely contrived and artificial?
I suppose they don’t see it as a problem because in this time and age, sex is no longer considered taboo, it’s considered a commodity, and people simply take it as a bit private and maybe taking a while or a special incentive to sell. And everyone wants to be sexy. Well, excepting those who don’t fit in the mould.
“Come on, be a sport; you’re not a prude, are you? You’ll get a bonus, etc.” Awww…
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Especially if the employee won’t get a raise or promotion if he won’t play along. Since employers should generally be free to promote whomever they wish, I’d simply eliminate the problem by banning such ads altogether.
Umm, do you think this might be related to being in Europe?
Depends. In Poland, I’ve heard of only one instance and it was a foreign company (Media Markt, a German chain). It’s a well-published competition featuring workers of the company. Viewers can send text messages and vote for the winner, who will become the cover girl of one issue of Playboy. Another action like that was advertised here, but the airline (RyanAir, Irish) was also foreign and the workers featured were from other countries, I think. RyanAir’s ads featured raunchy poses and covered nudity (stripped but covered with other objects).
I won’t take any bets on the morality of the nations West of Poland for two reasons: 1. I don’t know. 2. I don’t trust them at all in this regard. It’s really hard for me to compare Europe with the US because the States are by no means uniform - on the one hand you have sometimes extreme puritanism, on the other hand the biggest porn industry in the world (even Playboy, which is involved in the MediaMarkt contest is an American enterprise) and many things which will shock a European.
I’ve seen a website and a documentary on TV discussing how (ahem) avant-garde European ads can be compared to American ones, showing full-frontal nudity,
Apart from a comical soap ad from the early nineties I can’t think of any frontal nudity being aired here in a commercial, so I believe it must be the liberal West. As I said, I wouldn’t give a dime for them.
I traveled to Paris in 1985, and I seem to recall a print ad on the Metro walls showing a mother, father, and child naked from the waists up to advertise a clothing store.
I think that was their kind of sex lib. They weren’t actually advertising raunchy, steamy sex, but they were trying to make nudity casual and sex also casual. I don’t think they do that in the same way any more. Condom vending machines, pro-gay awareness actions, contraception/abortion brainwash, that’s more the style.
Is nudity already a standard feature of European advertising; the only new twist is using the store’s own employees?
Hmm… They will sometimes show a butt in medical/skin care/whatever ads, but those won’t feel sexual - clinic-style sterile more like. Newspapers will show a breast when talking about breast-feeding or breast cancer or such, and at most when talking about beauty rutines, but the models will be anonymous and the whole thing will be much less sexual than a typical highschool student at a party. It just doesn’t radiate.
On the other hand, the RyanAir and MediaMarkt ads have nothing to do with medicine or art. They are raunchy, they don’t aim to make nudity more casual. They don’t attempt any hippie-style brainwash, they are just smut. And that’s worrying.
Why they do it is that, I suppose, they want to give needy men some incentive to shop there or fly with that particular airline. The employees will still work there, so who knows, maybe the customer will have the opportunity to see a nude model in her daily duties at work for an additional kick. It puts me off, annoys me, I admit I have the urge to throw around criminal accusations and single them out for that.
have to be justified to Wall Street and at the annual meeting.